ANN NEUSER LEDERER

Raft in the Grass

Nine weather-worn posts, high as myself,
weaseled from newly thawed mud.

Then warmed, but infested in warmth
by winding lines of winged ants,
thinner than veins,
and remnants of hatched eggs,
white, and clinging.

So I dragged the seething poles
by their long and sturdy nails, one by one,
to the middle of the yard, an island
where the Water Oak once stood.

Into its grave clung four volunteers,
mid-sized teens creatively arrayed:
a Pear with blossoms but not fruits, 
a Huckleberry wearing tight green berries,
a Redbud shedding ragged purple blooms,
a Locust fiercely lined with thorns.

Over their roots I floated my raft,
newly made from partly rotted wood.
The thick ribbed nails were anchors in the loam.
Only proximity linked these boards 
with their common doom, 
to decompose among their kin.

Their topsides, velvet from weather,
were mossy swimming holes of yore,
where a bobbing wooden raft
invited from the center.

Chilled and dripping, we would climb
from murky underside to sunny top,
the raft's worn boards a blanket
to flop on. Then snooze, belly down,
long into the waning afternoon.

Ann Neuser Lederer's poetry and nonfiction are published in journals such as Diagram, Passages North, Brevity, 2 River Review, and UCity Review, whose "noteworthy" section presents ten of her poems. Her work is also honored in Best of the Net and Ohio State University's  Vandewater Poetry Award; published in anthologies such as A Call to Nursing, and The Country Doctor Revisited; and in her chapbooks Approaching Freeze (2003),The Undifferentiated (2003), Weaning the Babies (2007), and Fly Away Home (2019). Ann was born in Ohio and has worked there and surrounding states as a Registered Nurse. Additional information and links are available at http://ann-neuser-lederer.blogspot.com/